


This, Too

by OssaCordis



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Anthropomorphism - Freeform, Backstory, Carlos is pretty clueless about relationships, First Meetings, Love at First Sight, M/M, Moving On, Moving Out, Night Vale is a weird place, Science
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-18
Updated: 2013-08-18
Packaged: 2017-12-23 21:34:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/931330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OssaCordis/pseuds/OssaCordis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Carlos meets Cecil, the earth hemorrhages.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This, Too

**Author's Note:**

> “Welcome to Night Vale” is absolutely genius, and entirely belongs to Joseph Fink, Jeffrey Cranor, and Commonplace Books. I just wanted to play in their world for a little while.

The night before, Carlos knows it is over as he lies in bed and measures the impassable distance that separates Nathan and himself.

At breakfast – bowls of cornflakes gone soggy and black cups of bitter coffee – Nathan strokes his hand down Carlos’ cheek and says, “I’m sorry.”

 

And Carlos says, “I know,” and carries his already-packed bags to his car, alone.

* * *

_Something_ below the surface – a nameless, formless, omniscient thing that counts its age in millennia – turns over in the darkness and stretches. Its limbs shudder with pleasure and its countless digits delve up into the familiar old roots of mountains, stroking the landscape from below. It can feel valleys and rivers and the pulse of humanity and the fall of each and every sparrow. _Mine_ , the nameless thing sighs. _Mine_.

* * *

The interstate is black and straight and hot, and its tarry scent permeates even the fabric of Carlos’ Honda. He drives west because that is what his university’s Dean of Research has told him to do, and there is nothing behind to keep him, anyways. He drives for one, two, three days, stopping only when the sun has dipped below the horizon, leaving behind brutal streaks of vermilion in the looming night sky. He sleeps in grimy motels that appear to have recently witnessed a murder or two, and dreams of earthquakes and winged creatures and radio silence. When he awakes, he remembers nothing.

Recognizable cities disintegrate into featureless suburbs and then into small, dusty towns separated by vast distances. The loamy, green foothills of Appalachia become russet, Midwestern fields of grain that eventually give forth to the sharp, mountainous crags of the Rockies. Beyond, the landscape flattens and becomes bare: pink-orange boulders and scrubby tufts of foliage, few and far between. In the cool comfort of his air-conditioned car, Carlos doesn’t sweat. But, his skin prickles at the sight of the heat: a shimmering miasma hanging over the unending expanse of highway.

 

His GPS – a gift, years ago, from Nathan – dies twenty miles Northeast of Night Vale, and he nearly misses the solitary off-ramp sign for the town. He guides his car down the exit, filled with trepidation and the vague impression that he is headed somewhere from which he will not easily return.

* * *

Long ago, when the sun was young and the earth was comprised of the ashes of stars and unrelenting fires and the most rudimentary of organic compounds, it came into being with its six siblings beneath the crackling, unsettled crust. On this insignificant little world, time began with them, and will someday end with them in the unknowable heart of a dark star. For millions of years, the siblings fought and pushed and divided and embraced again. Below the crust, they still smolder: slumbering, waking, building, tearing down. This beloved masterpiece they call their own will never be complete, but instead grows and transforms and breathes like the complex organism that it is.

* * *

Night Vale slowly emerges from the desert. First, a scattering of Airstream trailers – rounded, antique, and silvery – set far back from the road and strung with clotheslines and half burnt-out strands of Christmas lights. Then a house, and two houses: ancient, crumbling adobe and an abandoned blue tricycle overturned by a corroded mailbox. Another mile yields a neighborhood, with a thoughtfully plotted grid of streets and tidy rows of streetlamps and driveways. Then a farm, populated by scrappy-looking longhorns and a sparse expanse of corn and wheat. Carlos, beginning to compose a Dustbowl metaphor in his mind, squints at a road sign in the dying daylight and turns his car to the left. Another middle-class neighborhood blooms from the desiccated terrain, sprinklers gushing at full capacity onto unexpectedly verdant lawns. Nestled among these streets, he observes the local high school and a disappointingly bland stripmall dominated by a Ralphs. Further beyond, the center of town takes shape; apartment blocks and office buildings rise from the concrete web of boulevards. Carlos notes the locations of the public library and a park – or is it a dog park? – before finding his destination at last.

The main science building of the community college nestles between a pizza parlor and a gymnasium. A squat woman, dressed all in lilac and waiting by the front door, greets Carlos with a kiss on each cheek and a forceful, “Call me Letty!”

She guides him through a labyrinth of laboratories, each darker and more mysterious than the next, but Carlos is no newcomer to science and not intimidated by what he sees. Laboratories – the good ones, anyways – are hidden behind several locked doors and heralded by neon warning signs and lit at night by only the faint blue glow of sanitizing UV radiation from a biosafety cabinet. He wants nothing more than to fling each door open and set all the centrifuges spinning and the Bunsen burners ablaze. He longs for numbers, data and cold, hard facts that make sense when nothing else does. He wants to drown the memory of Nathan in logic.

But first things first. Letty gives him a set of keys, and points him to a room the college has provided him during his stay. He retrieves his Spartan belongings from the trunk of his car, dumps his duffel bag of clothes into a drawer, and arranges his collection of textbooks on a narrow shelf nailed to the wall at eye height. There is just enough money in his wallet for dinner, so he strolls next door for a slice of pizza.

* * *

It claims this territory as its own, breaking off from its siblings and encircling the topography with oceans and distance to keep it safe. It grows the loftiest of trees and the smallest of insects alike, and refines the landscape with floods and fires. After some time, it allows humans passage across its surface, though not without challenges; eventually, it grows fond of these peculiar little beings, though its affection often goes unrequited.

Some of its siblings can boast of the longest rivers or the oldest cathedrals or the highest peaks, but it knows it has chosen well. It nuzzles the underbelly of its home and reaches out from ocean to ocean, across peaks and plains and diverse longitudes, and crackles its fondness across the sky with thunder-bursts and the hiccupping laughter of cirrus clouds and sea breezes.

It keeps its heart below the surface in a special place. There, it is dry, secluded, and protected by feathered figures from beyond the firmament: outsiders to this world, merely passing through for a millennium or two, but given special sanctuary in this place. The heat in that place reminds it of those heady days when it was young, and the earth was both an embryo and an inferno, huddled into itself amid the vastness of the universe. Sentiment, to be sure, but even measureless, amorphous beings are allowed fond memories of the era when they were young.

Reality curls in on itself at the edges in this place, a consequence of hosting the many-chambered heart of an omniscient presence below its surface. The residents don’t seem to mind too much, though occasionally another dimension slips through the cracks and takes a human or two with it.

* * *

Sated with greasy cheese and cloying cola, and mystified by the ration-like card the cashier presented him with firm warnings not to misplace, Carlos exits Big Rico’s Pizza in time to witness the zenith of Night Vale’s sunset. The stars are nearly visible along the blue-black periphery of the sky; he tilts his head back and shades his eyes from the last glare of the sun, trying to decipher the constellations in the East.

“Excuse me,” a polite voice says. “I think you dropped this.”

Carlos looks earthward again, meeting two startling eyes magnified by a pair of too-large, horn-rimmed glasses. The eyes, on closer inspection, are set in a handsome face.

“You’re new to Night Vale, aren’t you? Wouldn’t want to lose this… it’s a misdemeanor not to eat at Big Rico’s once a week.”

Carlos gapes as the man hands back his Big Rico’s ration card. “Really? You’re joking.”

“No, of course not,” the other man says, looking baffled. “I’m Cecil, by the way.”

“Carlos,” Carlos says, shaking Cecil’s hand without looking as he inspects the card again. In fine print on the back, it reads, _All citizens who do not eat at Big Rico’s Pizza once weekly will be subject to a fine not exceeding $2000 or a prison sentence not exceeding 12 months_.

Cecil gives a hesitant laugh. “Good thing we met, then, isn’t it? Wouldn’t want to be fined… or imprisoned.”

Carlos is still turning the card over and over in his hand. “Mmm hmm.”

“So, where are you from? What brings you here?” Cecil asks. “Not that I’m being pushy… I’m not a pushy person. I’m sorry if you think I am. I’m a journalist. Well, I have a radio show. A community radio show. I’m the Voice of Night Vale.”

“Umm…” Carlos manages to tear his eyes away from the card. “East. From out East. Well, sort of. I’m a scientist. I was sent here to do research. I’ll be here for a few months, at least…”

Cecil’s eyes widen, and his face glows. “How wonderful!”

* * *

Somewhere, over its heart, there is a twinge. Not a stabbing pain… just… a curious spasm.

* * *

“I… umm… I’m sorry, but does it look like the ground is _bleeding_ to you?” Carlos asks, bending slightly to watch as something dark crimson and viscous and ferrous-scented wells up from the ground on either side of the sidewalk.

“What? Oh, yes, that happens sometimes,” Cecil dismisses. Carlos looks lost, crouching on the pavement and reaching a cautious hand towards the liquid. “ _Really_. It’s nothing to worry about.”

“I need to get a rack of test tubes, or a flask, or something out here,” Carlos says breathlessly.

“Oh, look at _that_! Over there! I think that must be by the Arby’s… I’ve never seen anything like _that_ before. Lights in the sky,” Cecil says, pointing. But Carlos’ attention cannot be drawn back again.

“Maybe some litmus paper… and a scanning electron microscope… there are so many tests I need to run… I wonder if Letty left me her phone number anywhere…?”

Cecil scuffs his toe on the ground. “Well, I guess I should be off, then.”

“Yeah… sure…”

“Be careful,” he says. “Don’t lose your Big Rico’s card again. The city council won’t like that.”

Carlos pulls a small notepad from a shirt pocket and begins to pat at himself. “I thought I had a pencil on me…”

Cecil extracts a Night Vale Community Radio pen from his jacket. “Here you go.” Carlos accepts it, and begins scribbling frantic notes. “I hope I see you around again, sometime.”

Carlos does not reply. Cecil stands and watches for a moment, then checks his wristwatch. Just enough time to wander over to the Arby’s before he has to report to the station for tonight’s show. 

* * *

Below, something extends a limb and strokes at its heart in consolation. The humans above are doing things. Falling in love, perhaps. That always hurts a bit.

But, humans do not live forever. _This, too, shall pass._


End file.
